


touch me, delicately

by Meatball42



Series: Rare Pairs [101]
Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Breathplay, Complicated Relationships, Dream Sex, F/F, Face-Sitting, Gags, Hair Braiding, Held Down, Light Bondage, Love Bites, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Older Woman/Younger Woman, Painplay, Post-Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), Touch-Starved, Under-negotiated Kink, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-09-02 07:41:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20272372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: Bill thinks living with Janet is a wonderful idea. He speaks highly of her from back when they worked together. He says Ava could use a loving female role model. He says she’ll love it here, that she can finally rest, that he’ll visit her.Ava goes along with it. Her first instinct will always be to fight, but in this new and immutable world, she’s not sure what she should be fighting, and what she should embrace.





	touch me, delicately

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).

Normal people live inside stories. They have a narrative. They are the main character. They do things, and things happen to them. Others hurt them or do right by them. There are ways things should be.

Ava Starr is the daughter of a physicist. Her father's fatal experiment left her with the ability to live half-in and half-out of reality. She was taken in by SHIELD, a spy organization that raised her to be invisible, an untraceable spy and assassin.

Mostly assassin.

Her life has never been ‘normal.’ She has never lived inside the boundaries of a normal life. She knows that she is not the protagonist of a story, but a shadow, slinking along the edges. She does things, but nothing happens to her. Things just happen. Sometimes they affect her life, sometimes they don’t. And every event is merely a ripple on the waves of the world, emotionless, all-powerful tides of fate.

Ava Starr knows that everything is connected, and that nothing—bar nothing—really matters.

“You poor darling,” the silver-haired woman says after the portal has been closed. “I can’t imagine how much pain you must be in.”

Ava is actually reeling, floating on air, from the absence of pain. For the first time she can remember, _ nothing hurts. _ But, by habit, she nods.

She is, always, in pain.

The silver-haired woman strokes Ava’s cheek. Ava stays very still, because that wonderful feeling echoes through the empty spaces inside of her where the pain no longer fills. She looks between the eyes of the woman who fixed her, drawn like a moth to the light in those orb-like eyes. 

The silver-haired woman regards her, holding her face in one hand and her shoulder in the other. Whatever she sees must make her happy, because the corners of her lips turn up and she nods once.

“You can come with me, sweetheart. I’ll take care of you.”

Ava needs infusions of quantum energy every day to hold off the involuntary shifting. Janet swears they’ll work out a better way, but for now Ava moves with Janet into a little house in a quiet, wealthy San Francisco suburb. She has a room to herself, there is a small garden, and the neighbors smile at her when she goes for walks.

She has no idea how to feel about any of it.

When Bill visits, he gives her a long hug. They can touch for a long time now without it hurting Ava, and without falling through each other.

It should feel amazing. For a long time, all Ava wanted was to be able to hug someone, feel their warmth on her skin, cry into their shoulder and be comforted. And she wanted that from Bill, most of all, since he was the only person who has loved her since her parents died.

But it doesn’t feel right.

Her skin prickles when Bill touches it. She wants to move away. She doesn’t, mostly, because part of her does want it. But she isn’t happy, the way she always thought she would be when the pain stopped, when she could live in the solid world like everyone else.

Bill thinks living with Janet is a wonderful idea. He speaks highly of her from back when they worked together. He says Ava could use a loving female role model. He says she’ll love it here, that she can finally rest, that he’ll visit her.

Ava goes along with it. Her first instinct will always be to fight, but in this new and immutable world, she’s not sure what she should be fighting, and what she should embrace.

Living with Janet is… well, it just is. Ava doesn’t have much to compare it to—being SHIELD’s child soldier and then stealing for herself aren’t much of a baseline—and Janet is an unusual person by any standard.

Janet likes to bake, but not cook. She watches CSPAN and doesn’t get bored or throw things. She uses her Pym Particles for things like carrying the laundry upstairs, making a chocolate cake last longer. She drives into the city sometimes and comes back with technical documents that even Ava, with her years of scientific familiarity, can’t begin to understand, and reads them over tea.

Ava never once sees her get angry, even when Hank visits. She loves her daughter, who is shy around her but obviously worshipful, and she treats Ava the same way.

“You poor girl,” she whispers into Ava’s hair one night. A conversation about favorite foods had turned into Ava’s life story, after Janet realized that all of her choices came from the SHIELD canteen. “I’m so sorry for what they did to you. When I worked with SHIELD, they were hard, but not cruel. I wonder what changed.”

“Hydra,” Ava says shortly.

It’s hard to think with Janet’s hands on her. She’s cradled to Janet’s side, one hand holding hers and the other rubbing her back in constant, gentle strokes.

Janet cries when Ava explains the infestation of SHIELD. She kisses Ava’s forehead and whispers, swears that she’ll never let them touch Ava again.

Ava feels warm all the way through, from her skin to her soul, and, somehow, believes it.

Janet starts doing things for Ava. Things like brushing her hair out in the evening. Like holding her chin gently in her hand so she can apply eyeliner to Ava’s face. She brings down boxes from the attic, and they are full of old clothes that Janet has Ava try on.

“This was my grandmother’s house, after her husband died,” Janet tells her, holding an elegant pink dress up to Ava’s shoulders. They watch themselves in the mirror. “I think it’s a good color for you, don’t you think?”

She smiles, leans her cheek against Ava’s head. Ava wants to snuggle back into her. She rests just a little bit of weight back, and Janet hugs her.

“You sweet girl. Would you like to try on jewelry?”

Ava would, but more than that, she would like for Janet to keep touching her. When Janet is touching her, everything else falls away.

Janet braids her hair one day.

“I used to love doing this with my sister,” she says. “She had the most lovely brown hair. It shot through with blonde streaks in the summer. Hope’s hair looked like that when she was younger, but she never liked to let me braid her hair.”

Janet is always talking. Talking about the past, her childhood, her work with SHIELD, the places she travelled. But she isn’t lost in the past. She talks about current events, the things she sees on the news. She talks about Hope and Scott’s talks with the Avengers, the hopes she has for them and the things she’s afraid of. She talks about places she’d like to go, now that she’s free of the quantum realm and can live the life she wants to live again. She talks about taking Ava with her.

She never talks about her time in the other world.

“Do you like this?” she asks. She smooths down the wisps of hair by Ava’s face that are too short to stay in the delicate braids. She lets her fingers trail down Ava’s hairline, by her ear and neck, to the base of her skull.

Ava has hazy memories of her mother braiding her hair.

“Yes,” she tells Janet. “I love it.”

Janet hums as she continues. Ava doesn’t know the song, but she can hear the smile in it.

Ava has a dream, one night.

She wakes up in her bed, and she’s tied to the bedposts, every one of her limbs. The ties don’t hurt. They’re the silk belts of the robes Janet got for them, a matching pair.

And the feeling of being tied down, it’s nothing like anything she’s felt before. It doesn’t feel like SHIELD technicians soldering her into the first edition of her suit. It doesn’t feel like interrogation training. It doesn’t feel like being zip-tied to a chair. 

It feels like having Janet’s arms around her, being lovingly pressed to a warm body that makes her skin sing.

That could be because Janet is touching her. She’s kneeling over Ava’s body, one leg on each side. She sits, and her weight presses Ava’s hips, her midsection, into the bed, and it feels like the quantum energy being forced inside her body, every pound of pressure over every inch of skin its own kiss of painlessness.

“Open up for me, love,” Janet murmurs, and Ava opens her mouth.

Janet pushes something inside. It’s long, smooth, and it goes far back into her mouth. It almost makes Ava gag, but she focuses and breathes through her nose.

“Such a good girl, my sweetheart,” Janet coos. She kisses Ava’s cheek.

Ava flinches, but it’s a good flinch, a flinch that pushes her body closer to Janet’s. It’s a good flinch because it makes Janet keep going, kissing down to Ava’s throat, soft, fluttery things that tickle and make her squirm, bring her skin to life.

“You’re so good for me, Ava,” Janet whispers into her skin. There’s a different sensation, down on Ava’s chest where Janet is opening her shirt. It’s lithe and wet, and after a moment Ava realizes it’s Janet’s tongue. She moans around the thing in her mouth. Her hands tug against the silk ties, like they want to reach down and touch.

“I’ve got you,” Janet says. “I’ve got you.”

She moves lower.

When Ava wakes up, her underwear is wet and her heart is pounding. Her throat feels a phantom pain that is nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the pain she’s used to.

She rubs her neck and _ wishes. _

Hank comes and visits again, but this time, Janet tells Ava to go out to the garden while they talk.

Ava likes the garden. It’s beautiful, has nice smells, and there are sometimes interesting animals there. Janet is teaching her to garden, and she likes the time they spend together even more.

It’s also tucked around the side of the house, so it’s perfectly reasonable that Ava isn’t in sight while she invisibly watches Hank and Janet through the window.

“...fate,” she hears Hank say. “Jan, I still love you. I’ve loved you for all these years. Knowing that you’re alive again… I can’t even tell you how much more alive _ I _ feel.”

Janet is facing away from him, her arms crossed over her chest. “I’m sorry,” she says firmly, “but I’ve already told you. I can’t do it again.”

“I’m not saying we have to rush into things.” Hank walks around the kitchen table so he can see Janet’s face. “I’m not saying let’s run off to Majorca right now. But I thought I might see you more than once a month!”

Janet sighs, long and quiet. She looks out the window, straight through Ava. Ava shivers at her wide, gray eyes, their beauty and intelligence.

“I can’t do this right now, Hank. I do love you, I think some part of me will always love you, but… I’ve changed. And I can’t go back.”

Hank takes Janet into his arms, and she wants it. Ava knows the difference between welcoming touch, and letting someone touch you. Janet wants Hank to touch her, hugs him back with the kind of hunger that comes from the skin, and deeper.

Ava shivers cold this time, and returns to the garden.

“Why don’t you go with him?” she asks that night.

Janet looks up from the delicate armband she is encoding with nanoparticles over the kitchen table. “Hmm?”

“You want to go with him. Why did you say you didn’t?”

“Oh darling,” Janet sighs. “It’s not that simple.”

“I was a spy,” Ava says harshly. She doesn’t even know why she’s angry, but it’s a familiar heat. It fills her up and leaves no room for insecurity. “I know what it looks like when someone wants sex.”

Janet stands up, comes to sit by Ava on the couch. Her light floral skirt waves in the evening breeze coming in through the windows. Her soft sleeveless top clings to her stomach, her breasts, shows off the freckles dappling her skin.

Ava knows how soft that shirt is from touching it in the past. She knows how soft Janet’s arms are, too.

“I’m a different person than I was when I was Hank’s wife,” Janet explains. She doesn’t look at Ava, but toward the back of the house, through the window. “Part of me wants to go with him, yes. But the rest of me knows… that relationship belongs to the past.”

She’s still not looking at Ava. Ava wants to see those big gray eyes, wants to read the truth in them. Wants to see the desire she saw in her dream.

She leans in until she can feel the simmering of the quantum energy below Janet’s skin. She can always feel it, calling to her, especially when she’s low and needs Janet to infuse her with more.

Janet turns to face her, and they’re only a few inches apart. Ava reads surprise, there, but she also sees the heat she wanted to see. The heat she’s been trained to recognize.

“What do you want now?” she whispers. Just like they taught her, she doesn’t break eye contact. She lets her body fall closer, lets Janet want something just inches out of reach, lets her make the connection.

And she does. Janet’s long-fingered hand sinks into Ava’s hair and pulls Ava to her lips.

Upstairs, in Janet’s room, Ava touches all over that soft top, touches all over the skin beneath as she pulls it over Jan’s head and lets it drop to the floor. Janet’s hands climb up her back, around to frame her belly-button, inch upwards, slowly, to finally touch Ava’s chest as it rises and falls in anticipation. The moonlight turns Janet’s skin silver like her hair, like her eyes.

She looks like a ghost. Like something made for Ava, specifically, and only.

Janet’s bed is soft. Janet’s breasts are soft, when she guides Ava’s head down her chest and encourages her to kiss and suck. Ava closes her eyes and lets her tongue touch everywhere it has wanted to, loving the feel of the hard, sweet flesh almost as much as Janet’s satisfied moans, her fulfilled exhalations.

Janet’s hands are soft, when they sink under Ava’s panties and rub her cheeks, slip between them with searching fingers, pull her closer to Janet’s body just as the tip of a finger slides inside.

“Oh, oh,” Ava says to the silvery walls of the room, caught by surprise. It isn’t usually like this. Usually it’s hard and fast, the punishing thrusts of a cock enough for her to focus on that she can stay solid. Usually she’s thinking about the mission.

Now, Janet’s face is between her breasts and it feels like holding the world between those parts of her. Now, there’s barely anything inside of her, and she clenches and throbs for more, pushes back and begs. Now, her clit almost hurts from longing, and it’s so far from the other pain that Ava cries out when it pulses, its desire increased by a touch inside, a touch that she can’t identify, a touch she’d give anything just to feel more, more, _ more. _

“Oh, my darling,” Janet groans into her chest. “You’re so wet already. You feel so good.”

“Mmmm,” is all Ava can say back, but she leans down, her breasts hanging between them, their weight increasing how much Ava wants Janet to touch them, and kisses her.

Her lips are like nothing Ava has felt before. She wants to lick them, wants to feel them on every part of her, wants them to open so Janet can tell her what to do so she can be perfect and loved.

Janet’s body tightens and then Ava’s on her back. Janet pulls her shorts and panties off, throws them on the ground. Her fingers—two or three of them, Ava can’t tell—slide inside, and it’s the best thing Ava has ever felt. She shouts, arches her back, and then there’s a wonderful pull on her chest, Janet’s mouth over her nipple, feeling like it’s pulling on her clit through her body. Ava reaches down to stroke all of Janet’s beautiful skin, and something happens inside of her.

It’s hot, and heavy, and it hurts from being so good. Ava forces her hips down into the mattress to get more of it, as Janet sucks and rubs and watches her through her eyelashes. It happens again, and again, and Ava closes her eyes and presses her head into the mattress, her body writhing outside of her control as she loses touch with reality.

When it comes back, Janet’s hand is still inside of her. It feels like being tied to the bed, like she’s owned and loved and has no choice but wants it. She whimpers. Janet rubs again inside of her and she screams, once, high and boundless, splayed out and loving it.

Janet laughs. Her hair is falling into her face, her lips are plump from Ava’s breasts. “There’s more than one use for quantum energy, I guess,” she says, then kisses Ava’s skin again.

“It hurts,” Ava moans. Janet blinks, surprised, and starts to withdraw her hand. “No! Please, please, more.”

There’s another pulse of something, deep inside, and Ava convulses. She feels tears come to her eyes. “Yes, yes, please, please Janet, please.”

There’s another pulse, and another. A sharp pain, and Ava’s eyes fly open. She blinks away her tears to see Janet, eyes glittering dangerously, her teeth causing furrows in the skin just above Ava’s nipple. She bites down again, timed alongside another pulse, and Ava comes screaming.

Ava is shivery and shaking after, and Janet curls up with her under the blankets, soothing her and kissing her gently, touching her hair and the base of her spine and between her legs and everywhere. Ava feels like she’s floating, and every so often another pulse of quantum energy will shock her skin, and she falls ever deeper and clings to Janet’s body.

Janet whispers to her that everything is alright, holds her close, and shocks her again.

Ava wakes up, unable to breathe. There’s pressure over her face, wet and salty and she opens her mouth and the taste, she knows the taste, or she know the smell at least, and she licks up and Janet rocks her hips and Ava sucks and moans and reaches to touch. Her hands get pinned against the bed and her eyes roll back in her head.

She feels weightless and trapped and free.

A contact gets a message to Ava a month later. They need her help. Ava owes them one, so she tells Janet where she’s going and packs a bag. Janet kisses her at the door, her hand wound in Ava’s hair. She doesn’t let her go until Ava can barely breathe.

Being out in the world again is strange. Since she started living with Janet, she hasn’t gone out much. It’s been nice to just stay somewhere and enjoy good things, things that feel good and make her happy, and not plan for revenge or murder or the end of her own life.

But it is good to see other people again. Ava sits in the bus station and looks at her fellow humans, and wonders. It’s good, and strange, to watch them walk around, going somewhere, or waiting, or hungry, or sad. To watch the patterns of life moving around her.

It’s different, now, in a way she can’t describe, to know that she’s now watching them from somewhere, from a story of her own, from a place where she belongs, even if that place is back in the suburbs, and she is not.

Ava notices someone. Someone like her. Someone else who is watching the crowd, who sees things others miss. He sees her, and Ava doesn’t know what he’s looking for, specifically, but he must see it, or think he does. He comes over and sits next to her.

He starts asking normal questions. What’s your name? Where are you headed? Long trip? Business or pleasure? Ava lies, mostly, because that’s what she’s used to. She’s very good, and he doesn’t seem to notice.

And then he says, “How about I come along with you? It’s not safe for a pretty girl like you to be travelling alone.”

Ava snorts. Her life has never been safe. She has never expected it, or really even hoped for it. “No thanks.”

“Come on, sweetheart. I could take care of you.”

He leans closer, touches her shoulder. Ava’s skin prickles.

She remembers a hot touch on her waist, a hand tangled in her hair, pulling at her scalp. She remembers big gray eyes and the smell of freshly-baked chocolate cake, and delicate braids in her hair.

“Someone’s already taking care of me.”


End file.
